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Anonymus Bellermanni
The ''Anonymus Bellermanni'' is a collection of material on music, by one or more unknown authors, transmitted in a number of Byzantine manuscripts and first published by in 1841. Martin West comments: "It is drawn to a marked extent from Aristoxenus and Aristides Quintilianus but contains some valuable matter not found elsewhere, including half a dozen little instrumental tunes and exercises." Along with four poems attributed to Mesomedes, and not counting various fragments on papyrus, it is one of the only examples where a piece of ancient Greek music has survived in the manuscript tradition. The six short fragments of music are in an appendix to the document. Two of these are very short, and one is an ascending and descending octave scale. They are notated in the type of notation used for instrumental music, and appear to have been designed for people learning to play, almost certainly on the double pipe known as an aulos. Among other things, the document explains the symbols ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014. West wrote on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin. West also studied the reconstitution of Indo-European mythology and poetry and its influence on Ancient Greece, notably in the 2007 book ''Indo-European Poetry and Myth'' (''IEPM''). In 2001, he produced an edition of Homer's ''Iliad'' for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology entitled ''Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad.'' A further volume on ''The Making of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristoxenus
Aristoxenus of Tarentum ( el, Ἀριστόξενος ὁ Ταραντῖνος; born 375, fl. 335 BC) was a Greek Peripatetic philosopher, and a pupil of Aristotle. Most of his writings, which dealt with philosophy, ethics and music, have been lost, but one musical treatise, ''Elements of Harmony'' (Greek: Ἁρμονικὰ στοιχεῖα; Latin: '' Elementa harmonica''), survives incomplete, as well as some fragments concerning rhythm and meter. The ''Elements'' is the chief source of our knowledge of ancient Greek music."Aristoxenus of Tarentum" in '' Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes, 1961, Vol. 1, p. 593. Life Aristoxenus was born at Tarentum, and was the son of a learned musician named Spintharus (otherwise Mnesias). He learned music from his father, and having then been instructed by Lamprus of Erythrae and Xenophilus the Pythagorean, he finally became a pupil of Aristotle, whom he appears to have rivaled in the variety of his studies. According t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aristides Quintilianus
Aristides Quintilianus (Greek: Ἀριστείδης Κοϊντιλιανός) was the Greek author of an ancient musical treatise, ''Perì musikês'' (Περὶ Μουσικῆς, i.e. ''On Music''; Latin: ''De Musica'') According to Theodore Karp, his three-volume work on music "constitutes one of the principal sources of modern knowledge of ancient Greek music and its relationship to other disciplines". According to the 17th-century scholar Marcus Meibomius, in whose collection (''Antiq. Musicae Auc. Septem'', 52) this work was printed for the first time in 1652, it contains everything on music that is to be found in antiquity. The dates of Aristides are uncertain. In his book he refers to Cicero (d. 43 BC), and his work was used by Martianus Capella (fl. 410-420). According to Thomas J. Mathiesen, Aristides flourished in the late 3rd or early 4th century AD. One piece of evidence for Aristides' date, according to Winnington-Ingram, is that fact in the work he addresses two fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesomedes
Mesomedes of Crete ( grc, Μεσομήδης ὁ Κρής) was a Greek citharode and lyric poet and composer of the early 2nd century AD in Roman Greece. Prior to the discovery of the Seikilos epitaph in the late 19th century, the hymns of Mesomedes were the only surviving written music from the ancient world. Three were published by Vincenzo Galilei in his ''Dialogo della musica antica e della moderna'' (Florence, 1581), during a period of intense investigation into music of the ancient Greeks. These hymns had been preserved through the Byzantine tradition, and were presented to Vincenzo by Girolamo Mei. Life and career He was a freedman of the Emperor Hadrian, on whose favorite Antinous he is said to have written a panegyric, specifically called a ''Citharoedic Hymn'' (Suda). Two epigrams by him in the Greek Anthology (''Anthol. pal.'' xiv. 63, xvi. 323) are extant, and a hymn to Nemesis. The hymn is one of four which preserve the ancient musical notation written over the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aulos
An ''aulos'' ( grc, αὐλός, plural , ''auloi'') or ''tibia'' (Latin) was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology. Though ''aulos'' is often translated as "flute" or " double flute", it was usually a double-reeded instrument, and its sound—described as "penetrating, insisting and exciting"—was more akin to that of the bagpipes, with a chanter and (modulated) drone. An aulete (, ) was the musician who performed on an ''aulos''. The ancient Roman equivalent was the ''tibicen'' (plural ''tibicines''), from the Latin ''tibia,'' "pipe, ''aulos''." The neologism aulode is sometimes used by analogy with '' rhapsode'' and ''citharode'' (citharede) to refer to an ''aulos'' player, who may also be called an aulist; however, aulode more commonly refers to a singer who sang the accompaniment to a piece played on the aulos. Background There were several kinds of ''aulos'', single or double. The most common variety was a reed inst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arsis And Thesis
In music and prosody, arsis (; plural arses, ) and thesis (; plural theses, ) are respectively the stronger and weaker parts of a musical measure or poetic foot. However, because of contradictions in the original definitions, writers use these words in different ways. In music, arsis is an unaccented note ( upbeat), while the thesis is the downbeat. However, in discussions of Latin and modern poetry the word arsis is generally used to mean the stressed syllable of the foot, that is, the ictus. Since the words are used in contradictory ways, the authority on Greek metre Martin West recommends abandoning them and using substitutes such as ''ictus'' for the downbeat when discussing ancient poetry. However, the use of the word ''ictus'' itself is very controversial. Greek and Roman definitions Earliest use The ancient Greek writers who mention the terms arsis and thesis are mostly from rather a late period (2nd-4th century AD), but it is thought that they continued an earlier tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Seikilos Epitaph
The Seikilos epitaph is the oldest surviving complete musical composition, including musical notation, from anywhere in the world. The epitaph has been variously dated, but seems to be either from the 1st or the 2nd century CE. The song, the melody of which is recorded, alongside its lyrics, in the ancient Greek musical notation, was found engraved on a tombstone (a stele) from the Hellenistic town of Tralles near present-day Aydın, Turkey, not far from Ephesus. It is a Hellenistic Ionic song in either the Phrygian octave species or Iastian tonos. While older music with notation exists (for example the Hurrian songs), all of it is in fragments; the Seikilos epitaph is unique in that it is a complete, though short, composition. Inscription text and lyrics The following is the Greek text found on the tombstone (in the later polytonic script; the original is in majuscule), along with a transliteration of the words which are sung to the melody, and a somewhat free English t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Musicologists
Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient history covers all continents inhabited by humans in the period 3000 BCAD 500. The three-age system periodizes ancient history into the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age, with recorded history generally considered to begin with the Bronze Age. The start and end of the three ages varies between world regions. In many regions the Bronze Age is generally considered to begin a few centuries prior to 3000 BC, while the end of the Iron Age varies from the early first millennium BC in some regions to the late first millennium AD in others. During the time period of ancient history, the world population was already exponentially increasing due to the Neolithic Revolution, which was in full progress. While in 10,000 BC, the world population stood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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